Sunday, January 10, 2010

Looking Back 2009 - Looking Forward 2010...

So here we are - the end of one year and the beginning of another - time to look back and look forward - the adventures and opportunities of the year past and the adventures and opportunities of the year ahead...

2009 was a full and busy year - I began a regular gym routine which has morphed into a six-day a week routine - I'm in much better shape now than I was a year ago and fully expect to be in even better shape by the end of 2010. My virtual cross Canada trek from Halifax to Vancouver has me somewhere around Winnipeg right now (more posts to follow on that) - I hope to be in Vancouver by October or November 2010. The gym and fitness has become part of my life - a big lifestyle change for me. In 2010 I plan on running (well slogging - slow jogging) the Bluenose 5K - I've walked it the last two years. Also plan on playing more golf in 2010 than I did in 2009, but that will be u to the Golf Gods...

On the technology front 2009 was the year where Twitter became my most used Web 2.0 tool and Facebook declined in use - in fact if it were not for the ability of TweetDeck to simultaneously post to Twitter and Facebook, I might never use Facebook - although it is still my preferred tool for tracking Birthdays etc. As it is I use Greasemonkey scripts to customize facebook and get rid of a lot of the superfluous stuff that seems to spring up all over Facebook these days.

I also blogged less in 2009 but plan on doing more in 2010 - Twitter took a lot of what I wanted to say, but some days I just need more than 140 characters. Twitter changed the way we look at and get news - look at the uprisings in Iran and the Haiti earthquake - Twitter got the news out to the world...

I'm still looking for that killer Web 2.0 app that will tie all these social media sites together - if you create it, you will make a fortune. I thnk in 2010 the desktop and operating sytems will become less relevant and the move to the cloud will continue. I wonder what impact that Google's Chrome OS will have? Google's influence will continue t0 grow - it will be a noun, verb, adjective, and who knows maybe even a preposition bythe end of 2010.

1 comment:

Kevin Forbes
said...

I'm still looking for that killer Web 2.0 app that will tie all these social media sites together - if you create it, you will make a fortune.

Ian,

Isn't that a bit of the problem though? It seems like from a business standpoint, all the social media sites are waiting for the magical visionary, not to tie them together, but to make a profit off them.

They all collect users, but so far no one has been able to figure out what to do with these people once they have them.

Facebook has come closest, with the contextual advertising they run now, but more expansive (and invasive) plans have been shot down by the user base itself, unwilling to sacrifice their privacy.

Meanwhile, the only way Twitter has been able to make money is by selling the ability to search to the bigger boys like Google and Microsoft (something Facebook has already done).

I believe that before we can ever really talk about tying all the services together, the real golden egg is trying to figure out a way to fuse social media with a working business model that is also acceptable to the user base.

About Me

Dean of the School of IT & Creative Industries at the Nova Scotia Community College, I have an interest in problem and project-based learning, competency-based learning and assessment, and alternative educational methodologies and delivery methods that allow learners access anytime,anywhere.
NSCC is Canada's portfolio college and e-portfolio development is a powerful learning tool for faculty, staff, and learners.